be--one with his coarse fare and out-of-doors life, roughened and
seamed by the winds and browned by the sun to mahogany tints; aged but
playing with boyish zest at his primitive sport; the other, a
strong-limbed, well-marrowed, full-breathing youth of twenty-five, with
appetites all alert and sharpened, pink and pampered, loving luxury,
and prizing above all things else the atmosphere of wealth and its
refinements.




CHAPTER IV.

The West Against the East


Two months later a sectional war was raging in the Bines home at
Montana City. The West and the East were met in conflict,--the old and
the new, the stale and the fresh. And, if the bitterness was dissembled
by the combatants, not less keenly was it felt, nor less determined was
either faction to be relentless.

A glance about the "sitting-room" in which the opposing forces were
lined up, and into the parlour through the opened folding-doors, may
help us to a better understanding of the issue involved. Both rooms
were large and furnished in a style that had been supremely luxurious
in 1878. The house, built in that year, of Oregon pine, had been quite
the most pretentious piece of architecture in that section of the West.
It had been erected in the first days of Montana City as a convincing
testimonial from the owner to his faith in the town's future. The